When is it time to switch to a long hose setup?

[growcurlyhair]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently diving with a standard recreational setup; Octopus on a short hose clipped to my BPW, standard length primary, etc. I’ve been reading up on long hose configurations (5–7ft hose for primary donate and bungee backup) and I’m curious when divers typically make that transition.

I'm not tech diving (yet), and most of my dives are recreational, within 25m depth, with decent visibility and usually with a regular buddy or guided group. However, I am thinking more about streamlining, ease of gas sharing, and just having a cleaner setup that works well in emergencies.

So my question is:

At what point does it make sense to switch to a long hose configuration?

Was there a specific dive scenario or training progression (e.g., Rescue, Cavern, or Intro to Tech) that made it worthwhile for you?

I'm also curious if any of you made the switch early in your dive journey; Do you need to get some training for it?

Appreciate any insights, especially from those who started recreational and later moved into more advanced diving.

Thanks!

Best
Garrett

 

[Vitesse2l]

Some time before I started tech training, I had to share my spare on a dive. Don't recall the particulars but as I recall it was a recreational "deep" dive and the diver used my spare for the ascent and safety stop. It was a royal pain trying to manage a steady ascent, leashed together so close, face to face

I had a similar moment of realisation too. I was doing air share drills while training and found the proximity really uncomfortable.

 

[lizardland]

If you are a recreational diver then the weak point in using a long hose is other people. Most technical divers are familiar with long hoses and primary donate (I think most OC twinset divers are diving that way these days, secondary donate/bungeed long hose really seems to be in the minority). I doubt most recreational divers encounter it much. And people don't listen to buddy checks. You can tell them all you like about how it works, if they aren't familiar they will revert to what they know when stress starts to ratchet up.

You may need to share air from dive 1 onwards so the benefit of a long hose is always there. You need to be happy and confident in your ability to manage the other person, be in control when someone who doesn't know what they are doing is flapping round 6 feet away from you or know how to deal with it when they revert to training and grab the spare regulator they see dangling round your neck.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I think I've tried it all. I started with the traditional setup, where the octopus is the longer of the two hoses at 40 inches and is semi-secured on the chest. A few years later I arrived for GUE Fundies class with a 5-ft primary hose and bungeed-necklace backup, but I found it uncomfortable--and I'm not a tall guy. So I switched to a 7-ft hose for rec diving and found it surprisingly comfortable and not unwieldy at all. And the 7-ft hose was required when I later took cave diving courses. But ...

I got tired of being the only person (well, along with my wife) on the boat at tropical dive resort-type destinations or on liveaboards with a 7-ft hose, having to hand the rig up from the water to a DM only to see my neatly coiled and clipped-off hose uncoil, and the DM not having the time to coil it up again because he needs to quickly move on to the next diver. I think we encountered DMs who had never even seen a 7-ft primary. Outside of Florida and a few places where cave/tech and recreational diving communities intersect, there are still people who have never seen this configuration. On a trip where we dived from a RIB/Zodiac, the DMs would put our rigs in a rack in the middle of the boat with others' rigs, and our 7-ft hoses would inevitably find a way to spill beyond our slot and get caught between tanks. From where I was seated on the RIB, my rig was often not within my reach for me to be able to re-stow the hose properly. While I really like the idea of having a single configuration that feels comfortable and familiar for all my diving, I finally relented and got the "streamlined OW" configuration mentioned in Post #2 of this thread by @tursiops, where the backup reg is bungeed, but the primary has a "just right" length (generally 40 inches): long enough to comfortably donate to an out-of-air diver but short enough for the traditional routing under the arm. I do have a swivel fitting on the reg for improved comfort.

 

[happy-diver]

Receationally speaking in the name of easy fun diving
If you are going for your entire diving life carry around unnecessary stuff that is really only used in fancy drills or on youtube videos, you may as well take a bathtub, and some soap, to make a better use of the environment, so then to donate to someone that clearly brought the wrong gear or not enough air, no I am not taking the reg out of my mouth, so yeah a hose that allows full movement with a free head, that is plenty enough hose length for my liking and that's it

Just like at those traffic lights, you are more likely to get into trouble if you look at all those other divers

 

[lexvil]

Interesting discussion for basic. In diving there are constant changes and it pays to try some of them, when I started there was no internet and in fact you had to stick your finger into this round wheel thing and spin up numbers on the phone there were also no secondary regulators so you learned to buddy breath, sharing one reg and bailing out. Someone earlier cited someone dying because of a dislodged secondary and couldn’t help but think buddy breathing may have saved that life? I have also encountered divers that are scared to death of removing the reg from their mouth, perhaps more time should be spent on that with new divers??

Change can be hard, harder for some than others this is why I try to try logical new things and listen to new ideas, it took several attempts to adopt the 40” but that’s where I am now and for that the time to change is now and “if” you see cave diving in your future learning the longer hose (7’ or Bob’s 8’ ) is a good idea but it’s not easy to learn it by yourself and in all honesty it’s a total PITA in regular enjoyable diving done by 99% of the divers out there.

If you see yourself in caves or deeeep wrecks start learning rebreather as soon as you are completely comfortable in the water, until then a longer under arm hose and necklaced secondary is what you should look into.

 

[boulderjohn]

Outside of Florida and a few places where cave/tech and recreational diving communities intersect, there are still people who have never seen this configuration.

About 10 years ago, I went on a day boat dive on the Great Barrier Reef, a trip that required a very long trip from shore. During that trip, our assigned DM gave a dive briefing that pretty much reviewed the entire OW course, after which I took her aside and showed her my gear, with its 7-foot hose, so she would not be surprised. She was incredulous. Why would anyone use a crazy system like that? She went to the director to see if it would be allowed. After it was allowed, pretty much every other crew member came by to see my bizarre equipment for themselves.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Another problem with air2's:
While doing my rescue class, my partner was using an air2. We had to do an OOA drill and I was the one OOA. So I signal to my buddy the neck cut off signal and he hands me his primary which was on a 32" hose BTW, way too short to be an octo but he didn't like the 40" because it was too long for him for regular use. This was before swivels and running hoses under right arms.
Anyway, he put's his snorkel in his mouth instead of his air2 and inhales a mouthful if water, which instantly sends him on a bee line for the surface and in the process rips his second stage out of my mouth leaving me there wondering what just happened? Good thing it was just a drill in 20 feet of water!

 

[tursiops]

Another problem with air2's:
While doing my rescue class, my partner was using an air2. We had to do an OOA drill and I was the one OOA. So I signal to my buddy the neck cut off signal and he hands me his primary which was on a 32" hose BTW, way too short to be an octo but he didn't like the 40" because it was too long for him for regular use. This was before swivels and running hoses under right arms.
Anyway, he put's his snorkel in his mouth instead of his air2 and inhales a mouthful if water, which instantly sends him on a bee line for the surface and in the process rips his second stage out of my mouth leaving me there wondering what just happened? Good thing it was just a drill in 20 feet of water!

LOL. So was that a problem with having an Air2 or with wearing a snorkel?

 

[boulderjohn]

The Air 2-type system has deficiencies that have been noted in this thread. The bungeed alternate does not have those deficiencies. Comparing the two, the only advantage of the Air 2 is one less hose, and I fail to see much benefit in that missing hose compared to a short hose lying on the right shoulder. So given the choice, why would one go with an Air 2?

Before you go to a shop and ask the experts, check out this story.

The shop I was working for changed agencies, and the owner of the new agency suggested a bunch of strategies to increase shop profit margins. One of them was to identify one specific model of every piece of equipment to focus on for sales, because higher volumes of specific models lowered dealer cost and increased profit margins. Accordingly, the shop identified those specific items. Again following the lead of the agency owner, all instructors were to purchase those items to use any time they were in the presence of customers, including, of course, students. We would be required to tell students that we had personally selected those models because they were the best, even though the real reason was we would be fired if we said anything else.

One of those items was the Atomic version of the Air 2. If I had remained with that shop, I would have had to buy and use the Atomic SS1, and I would have been required to lie to my students, telling them it was the very best choice, even though in my own private diving I used a bungeed alternate and would never have dreamed of using the SS1 the shop would have required me to buy.

 

[tursiops]

The Air 2-type system has deficiencies that have been noted in this thread. The bungeed alternate does not have those deficiencies. Comparing the two, the only advantage of the Air 2 is one less hose, and I fail to see much benefit in that missing hose compared to a short hose lying on the right shoulder. So given the choice, why would one go with an Air 2?

Marketing.